Determination of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAIDs) residues in water samples

Pharmacologically active substances used to treat human and animal illnesses can enter the aquatic environment via effluents from wastewater treatment plants or in the case of veterinary drugs directly through liquid manure discharge. Some of these substances enter the environment either as the parent compound or as active/inactive metabolites. Due to their pharmacological activity, their determination and understanding their behavior and fate in the environment are important. The scope of this paper was to develop an analytical procedure to determine common pharmaceutical residues in wastewaters. Pharmacologically active substances were chosen according to their wide spread application in Slovenia and Central Europe and are members of analgesics, e.g., non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: ibuprofen, naproxen, ketoprofen and diclofenac. Selected compounds were isolated from synthetic water using a novel SPE sorbent Strata X. Due to the non-volatile nature of these compounds they were first silylised prior to gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric detection. The developed procedure was tested with synthetic wastewaters and their extraction efficiency (>84%) and method limits of detection (2-6 ng L(-1)) were determined. Our procedure has been adopted and optimised for "real" water samples and applied to eleven drinking and ten river water samples from Slovenia. The results showed no traces of NSAIDs in all potable water samples and low-range contamination (ng L(-1)) of Slovene rivers. These results show that NSAIDs contamination of Slovene waters is comparable with published results of water contamination in Central Europe.